The BBV Foundation carried out this research on Simón de Anda y Salazar, Governor and Captain General in the Philippines from 1770 to 1776, with the aim of recovering aspects of the historical past shared with the Philippines, and coinciding with the 5th Centennial of the Discovery of the New World. The Governor’s biography documents the hostilities between the Spanish Crown and the religious orders in the Asian colony. The Crown was extremely interested in tightening its control over the Church because of the latter’s dominance over the population, and so its attitude to the religious groups oscillated between permissiveness and an attempt to subjugate them.